


All Living Creatures

by deborah_judge



Category: Hakuouki
Genre: F/M, First Time, Loss of Virginity, Religious Content, Sanan route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 12:50:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15774462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: Sanan/Chizuru at the end of Kyoto Winds.





	All Living Creatures

**Author's Note:**

> This is game-based fanfiction and I have made no effort to be historically accurate. There is as far as I know no basis for the backstory that Sanan was once a monk, it just seemed to suit him.
> 
> Set during Sanan's route, right after their last scene in Kyoto Winds.

The light of the stars on the sea is almost as beautiful as the man standing beside her. Chizuru’s asked to stay with Sanan and he’s allowed it, allowed it for as long as she likes. She doesn’t think she will ever want to be anywhere else.

When the light shifts to the beginning of dawn Sanan stirs beside her, excuses himself. Normally he would push himself to work through the day, but he can’t do his research on the ship so it is time for him to sleep. Chizuru nods, and when he turns to go below decks she instinctively follows him. They pass by her cabin and she just keeps walking with him. When they reach his cabin he places his hand on the door and her heart is in her mouth. Finally he asks the question that had been rising between them. “When you said you wanted to stay with me,” he asks, “did you mean that you wish to share my bed?” 

The directness of it calms her. It’s far beyond the bounds of propriety, but he’s shed those long ago with his humanity, leaving only kindness. “Yes,” she says. She’s not human either.

“Then come in,” Sanan says. His room is sparse and quiet. He sits on the small, narrow bed and gestures for her to join him. She’s suddenly struck by the weight of what she’s done. All her life her father had prepared her make a good marriage. Is she prepared to throw that away to become a soldier’s bedmate?

The question, once formulated, is laughable. She wants no marriage that her father would ever make for her. Sanan is beautiful, and kind, and she itches to push her body against his and touch his hair with her hands. She sits beside him, meeting his eyes.

“Just tell me why,” he says.

“Because I want to be with you,” she answers immediately.

He shakes his head. “We were together all night, by the water,” he says. “Why this?” He gestures at the bed, and the room, around them.

There are so many answers, and she just wants to reach for him. But he needs to hear a reason, so she settles on one. “My father can’t trade me if I’m not a virgin,” Chizuru says.

It’s a good answer, she sees. Sanan knows she’s looking out for herself and not just acting on momentary desire. That she can plan ahead and think through consequences of actions, which she’ll need to if she’s going to be with him. A faint smile crosses his lips. “I need to tell you a secret,” he says. He beckons her closer and brings his lips almost to her ear. “I’ve never done this before,” he whispers.

Her mind goes blank. “With a virgin?” she asks.

“With anyone,” Sanan says. “I was raised a monk, never married, and don’t go to Shimabara. It never seemed relevant. So surely, if you simply wish a change of status, there are others who could help you who have more experience and skill.”

She knows what he needs to hear. “I don’t want anyone but you,” she says. “And I’ve seen you move. No one has more skill.” His eyes go dark, and she’s suddenly aware how much is at stake here, for him as well as for her. But he’s not sending her away. Instead he begins to uncover himself, revealing first a shoulder, then a line of his chest. She knows he can see the hunger in her face. She thinks suddenly of hunger on his face when he stood before her with his outstretched sword, begging for her blood. Did he need her blood as much as she needs now to touch him? She hadn’t given in to him, it hadn’t felt right. But now he’s allowing her, giving in to her hunger when her fingers reach for his collarbone and she inhales a deep, needy breath. 

Sanan touches her slowly, with unhurried focus. As soon as she’s naked she speads her legs for him, but he touches her side, kisses the edge of her ribs and the dip at her waist. She reciprocates, rolling him over and pressing her lips to the center of his chest. His body is warm and everything feels alive. She’s more than ready when he enters her and when he loses himself inside her, a little, it only adds to her pleasure.

Chizuru holds him, after, feeling him warm and sated. She’s not sure what’s changed for her but she knows that things have. Possibilities open and close with every irrevocable choice. She wonders what’s changed for him.

“When I was a monk,“ Sanan says, responding as if to her thoughts, “I would concentrate for hours on a fleeting breath, on the shape of a flower. With enough focus, in a single shape can be found all the beauty in the world. But I have never seen beauty like you.”

Sanan’s arms are soft around her. “I promised to eliminate suffering, for all living creatures, no matter how many lifetimes it takes,” he says. Chizuru recognizes his words as part of the Bodhisattava Vow and when he speaks them suddenly things fall into place. The Bodhisattava’s path is to live in the world of pain until all beings can be liberated. She realizes, suddenly, that it wasn’t his arm that made him become a Fury, or not only. There were living creatures in pain, pain that he had taken a role in causing, and he had to become one of them. Until all beings can be liberated. Chizuru knows then that she is going to give him her blood, like he has given her his body. Not because of guilt for her father’s actions, or even out gratitude to Sanan for saving her, but just because he is doing something good and she wants to be part of it. Her body is her own now and she can use it as she chooses, and she wants to use it for this.

“For all living creatures,” Chizuru says, repeating his words. “No matter how many lifetimes.” There is so much life in her blood, and so much hope between them. She feels their shared warmth, so far from human, and so desperately alive.


End file.
